In the beginning of August we started receiving packages. They came from Europe, from South America, from Asia and from the United States and when we finally had got all of them we felt like celebrating an early Christmas.

We collected them all at Four and took turns opening them up - it took us a few hours and it was such a treat! To finally get a real life encounter with all these pieces that we had only seen images of was a bit like meeting an internet fling on a first in real life date - nervous and exciting. We were not disappointed!

The exhibition space at Four is limited and we had a wide range of expressions, colours and materials that needed to interact and make sense together. To give each piece the right display we decided to build a gigantic jewellery box.

The concept for the exhibition was to invite the visitors to get close to the pieces - to touch them, try them on - to get to know them. We hoped that this would make them curious about the techniques, the materials and the ideas behind the artwork. The exhibition was a part of Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, GIBCA and this gave us new visitors that hadn’t experienced this kind of jewellery before. We wanted them to feel welcome to step into not only the jewellery box but into our world of creative jewellery.

Necklines no:2, necklace by Jana Graf

It was a pure pleasure to meet with the visitors at Play for Display. They varied in age and jewellery experience. We got visits from the jewellery department at HDK, from other galleries and people who had read about it in the magazine and gotten curious about these spectacular art works. “Can I really touch them” was a common reaction.

We were very excited to meet with some of the artists at the opening. Danni Schwaag came from Germany, Emelie Westerlund came from Scotland, Madalina Stoica came from Romania and María Carelli and Sandra Tamborini came all the way from Argentina! Thank you so much for making the opening a wonderful evening!

During Play for Display it was easy to get visitors to try on the jewellery. Most of them already knew that this was possible and some came just because they wanted to feel and try. They were very careful and gentle around the artwork and even people with no or just a little earlier “art jewellery experience” showed a genuine interest.

The exhibition and the display made the visitors feel welcome and relaxed to share their impressions. Depending on their personal background their associations differed, but we appreciated their direct, first impressions.“Wow, it’s like a cake! Look at me!”
“It looks like it could be some kind of a tool.”
“This is really a party outfit jewellery - look, it looks great!”
“I can see so many pictures in this piece. Here is Santa Claus, and this could be a pine tree...”
“it is like a hive. A container for food and security.”
“It looks like a heart! Is it a heart?”
“It is so soft! Like soap. Is it Chinese signs, do they mean anything?”
“It looks like an instrument - like you could measure for example the altitude of the sun.”
“Oh wow! How has she made this? It is so heavy!”
“ Well this one is the most important thing of them all!”

Nymph, Brooches by Carole Deltenre

We believe that it is important that art can exist on different levels, be including and democratic. You don’t have to be an expert to look at and enjoy art. We encouraged people to try, feel and react spontaneously to the work. When we encouraged the visitors to share their thoughts most of them were no ground-breaking analysis of high theoretical standard, but that is perfectly fine. The important thing is that visitors react and feel something, evoke a perhaps new interest and spread the word about our work. We got some critique about the placement of the work. A visitor felt worried that the pieces were moved “out of place” when visitors tried them on. In this exhibition it was not important that the pieces lay in the perfect position in the boxes. The magic happened when the pieces were lifted up and tried on.

Frozen Fireworks, necklace by Mia Maljojoki.

More magic, more jewellery!
Sanna & Karin /Diagonal

About the author

Diagonal is a collaboration between Karin Roy Andersson & Sanna Svedestedt. Our focus is to promote contemporary art jewellery. With this blog we share our views & thoughts to take you with us through the ups & downs of our jewellery adventures.